


It’s All Over, But The Crying

by Ms_Informed



Category: DC Cinematic Universe, Suicide Squad (2016)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst, Canon Relationships, Canon-Typical Violence, Families of Choice, Harley Centric, Multi, Non-Linear Narrative, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-24
Updated: 2018-01-24
Packaged: 2019-03-08 13:13:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13458993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ms_Informed/pseuds/Ms_Informed
Summary: Harley; in pieces.





	It’s All Over, But The Crying

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warnings: sexual abuse/violence, implied non-graphic rape and character with PTSD. If you find anything else please let me know so that I can flag it here.

The first time Mister J lays her down, old leather cracked and brittle against her skin, he fractures four of her ribs while electricity shoots from her head to her toes.

He sings to her afterwards; hands cool against her fevered skin one moment and then curled into fists the next.

It's okay, Harley tells herself; jaw aching around the leather strap in her mouth.

Love is supposed to hurt.

* * *

In the cage, she counts seconds and minutes and the guards that come and go. One, two, three, four; she buries her fingers in number five; digs her blunt nails into his eye socket and doesn't feel a thing.

She doesn't sleep much these days. Maybe she never did. She tears up her overalls, weaving them into whimsical shapes and then a rope. They won’t give her a bucket and she only gets two visits a week to the shower stalls, so she defecates in the corner of her cell, grinning when lips curl and noses wrinkle.

She tells a boy, too young and stupid to stay away, that his momma never loved him; because it's true and she likes the way his green eyes look, wet with tears. 

(She crushes his larynx. But that's later; on a bad day.)

* * *

At night she sees shining teeth, blood red scars and perfect green lawns. 

She can't tell her dreams from her nightmares.

But that’s nothing new.

* * *

Harley's momma tells her she is too smart for her own good.

"You outta be grateful for what you have.” Her is skin reddened and paper thin, cigarette in one one hand and mug of cheap bourbon in the other. “Pretty little thing like you’ll find a dozen men to buy you drinks and shiny things.”

Like those are the only things in life that matter.

Harley’s mother only ever gives her bruises, but sometimes they sit round her neck and wrists like jewellery.

* * *

Floyd’s daughter looks Harley up and down, wary and curious in equal parts.

“I’m Harley,” she says, extending a hand, feeling awkward and exposed; like all her poor choices are written across her skin.

“Hello,” says Zoe. “Dad’s told me about you.”

Harley raises one eyebrow and then the other. She can feel Floyd hovering behind her, warmth and nervousness apparent in the way he’s standing a little too close, a little too still.

“He’s mentioned you once or twice,” says Harley, because it’s true and Floyd had said, “don’t lie, but don’t be too honest either” and about a dozen other things that didn’t need to be said.

Harley looks over her shoulder at Floyd, who is studying his daughter, and she can read his worry in the way his eyes catch on Zoe’s long sleeves and barely visible bruise on her collar bone. It’s a thread she can follow all the way back to Zoe’s mother: reformed addict with a taste for alcohol and bad men. 

She wonders how many people Floyd paid to watch over his daughter and whether Waller has taken over that duty now. 

Zoe looks at her, head tilted to one side, and her eyes are exactly like her father’s.

“You help my dad.”

Harley sits at the table, leaving space for Floyd, who sits gingerly between them, half smiling, like he can’t help himself.

“We help each other,” she tells Zoe.

* * *

There are scratches on the floor of her cell. Sometimes Harley remembers that she put them there.

The guards like it when she flirts with them, the smell of their arousal thick and nauseating. 

She smiles sweetly and flutters her eyelashes and it takes four of them to break her hold on the genitals of the new guard.

Afterwards she licks blood off her fingers, skin still buzzing from their tasers.

One of the men outside her cell throws up, his bile bright orange and rancid.

"Aw, honey," she says, "you ain't gonna last long."

(He doesn't.)

* * *

She pisses on the bed once. Doesn't mean to, but her body is weak, shallow breaths that rattle and her arm might be broken.

Mister J pauses. His eyes never tell her anything, but his mouth twitches and Harley wishes she could catalogue all his expressions. Lock them in a box and throw away the key. A Pandora’s chest of wicked things that she couldn’t open even if she wanted to. 

"Why, darlin'," Mister J drawls, voice like molten lava and freezing water all at once, "that ain't polite."

She chokes on her own blood that time and Mister J gives her the kiss of life (again) and she comes back laughing, thinking this might just be the metaphor that kills her.

* * *

Deadshot, _Floyd_ , looks at her like he doesn't know what to make of her, and it sits like an itch against her skin.

"You oughta take a picture," she tells him, flashing her best shit-eating grin at him.

He's still holding the mask, and there are a million tales she could unravel in the way his fingers curl around the leather.

"Don't think I'd need a picture to remember you," he says, and it's not a come on or a rejection and Harley doesn't know what to make of _that_.

* * *

A college professor keeps her back after class one day, small talk and empty words falling like diamonds from his mouth. Harley watches the way he grips his desk, knuckles white and licks his lips. She knows this dance.

She’s a top student, the best in this class, so he doesn’t have anything to offer her. She goes down on her knees anyway.

She’s a master at knowing what people want from her.

She’s even better at giving it to them.

* * *

They strap her to a chair and pump her full of a neapolitan chemical cocktail, like she can’t read the labels on the bottles. Phenothiazines, chlorpromazine. butyrophenone and other anti-psychotics.

“You think I’m crazy,” she says; letting the words come out like a song and then giggling high pitched.

“Oh, you ain’t crazy,” says the guard, fingers digging into her cheek muscles, breath hot and heavy. “You’re batshit insane.”

Harley stops laughing. Licks her lips and then, when he’s dumb enough to lean closer, she bites down on his mouth, tearing through skin and tissue, blood rushing over her tongue. She swallows fatty flesh, grinning at the screaming guard and the three men it took to pull him away from her. 

They secure her head after that.

* * *

She paints her face red and blue; a symbol for all the blood and bruises she’s worn for most of her life. Discards the glasses and doesn’t miss the sharp edges the lenses gave everything.

Mister J claims her body with jagged teeth, deep cuts and black ink. Carves words and scars into her body.

“You already have everything,” she tells him, laughing when he threatens to cut out of her heart.

She isn’t afraid. His eyes are dark and she can no longer tell where she ends and he begins.

“I don’t think I do,” he says, slowly pushing the blade between two of her ribs.

(Turns out, he’s right.)

* * *

“What do you want?”

Waller’s face is a mask and try as she might Harley can’t quite pry it loose. Behind her Chato is shuffling from side to side, George is reeling off a wish list of vanity items and Waylan is muttering something about soaps. 

Harley thinks of picture perfect suburbs, the expression Mister J wore when she held the gun to his head, the metallic thunk and agony of the tracker being implanted under her skin, Gotham’s dark alleys and four concrete walls. 

“I’ve always been partial to a well made espresso and good novel,” she says, and it sounds like a lie because all her truths do.

There is dust in Waller’s hair, blood running down from a cut behind her ear, and her thousand dollar suit is ripped and dirty. She stands in front of them fearless, immovable and unimpressed. After a moment she directs a curt nod in Harley’s direction and begins negotiations with the others.

Harley never does work out what the Enchantress showed Amanda Waller. 

It bothers her less than it should.

* * *

In college she has a girlfriend who brings her flowers every Sunday and sends her postcards, even though they live in the same dormitory.

"I love you," she tells Harley, tears running down her cheeks, apologetic and distraught when Harley breaks it off.

Harley holds her close; chest tight and skin hot. She doesn’t know why this isn’t enough. Why being loved feels like a slow death.

"You'll get over it," she says gently.

(She had known how to be gentle back then.)

* * *

"Harley," says Floyd, and his voice is pitched low; for her ears only. "It's dead."

She looks down and the blackened bloody pulp under her bat.

"It moved," she says; and it's a lie because she can’t even remember putting the gun away.

Flood moves closer, places one hand on her shoulder and the other on the bat.

"Hey," he says, "you ready?"

Harley flutters her eyelashes at him and smiles. Pulls away giggling, and says things that make the others turn away.

But Floyd keeps on looking, his expression patient. He looks at her like she's a puzzle worth solving. Like he might take his time.

Harley saunters away and feels his gaze like something heavy and soft between her shoulder blades and for one whole minute she forgets about Mister J.

* * *

Harley graduates with honours and a reputation. 

The Arkham job is the only she can get. People don’t care about the numbers on her transcript or the way she can decipher past lives in worn sleeves, cracked lips and calloused hands. Their eyes catch on her face, legs, breasts and she can see the narratives they are spinning like webs; fairytales about her success that show in the way they never quite make eye contact.

Harley smiles prettily and swallows down her anger and humiliation. Says ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and accepts the only position on offer.

In less than twelve months Mister J will hand her a long knife and watch, laughing, as she cuts out the eyes and tongues of four of the people who passed her over. 

It doesn’t make her feel better. 

By then, she barely feels anything at all.

* * *

It’s raining and Harley is shivering, from grief or anger or cold. She can’t tell anymore. The boys look happy to see her and it breaks something inside of her. Or maybe it sets it right. Their uneasy affection turning her sharp, broken edges into something else. Something that doesn’t cut quite as deep.

Floyd approaches her slowly and he has killed so many, is soaked in just as much blood as her, and his eyes aren’t kind but he looks at her with something like empathy and he’s careful when he helps her down from the top of the car. His hands are warm against her skin and she doesn’t miss how he makes sure not to touch her where the bullet grazed her side. 

He doesn’t hold her like she’s fragile or broken, just like she’s someone that matters. 

She doesn’t think that she’s ever been touched like that before.

“Hey,” he says softly. “You okay?”

Harley tries to smile, another little performance, but Floyd has never asked her to put on a show and he’s still looking at her, patient and steady.

So, she allows herself just this. One moment where she tucks her head underneath his chin, eyes closed, and listens to his heartbeat. His voice rumbles when he talks, soft vibrations under her ear and Harley pulls away and lets him set her down because she can’t bare a second more.

Floyd makes her feel safe and Harley has spent years telling herself that she wants something with teeth.

Floyd makes her forget all the pretty little lies Mister J made her believe.

Floyd makes her forget all the pretty lies she told herself.

* * *

After she kills the third guard they come for her at night, stripping her of her overalls and leaving burns and bruises in the wake of their fists, boots and tasers.

Harley doesn’t go quietly; she breaks three bones, dislocates five joints, loosens teeth and tears out hair, laughing the entire time.

She looses consciousness in a pool of her own blood and vomit and wakes up in the cage. 

She looks at the metal bars and a concrete floor and welcomes the pain. 

The agony reminds her of Mister J.

* * *

“I know what you want,” says the Enchantress, fury, love, kindness, hatred and a million other things apparent in her voice and the way she moves.

Harley laughs because that’s always been _her_ gift.

* * *

The first time she meets Mister J he grins at her, eyes sharp. He asks her to play a game. It’s a challenge and he looks at her like he knows that she’ll put up a fight.

That’s all it takes really. A lifetime of neglect, abuse and stereotyping, and one man who can see past her pretty face.

“Sure,” she says, cataloguing his tattoos and the dried blood beneath his nails. “What are the stakes?”

He laughs, and it loosens something inside of her.

She thinks, _all I’ve ever wanted is to be seen_.

She can’t tell who she’s lying to.

* * *

“I know how the world works,” Harley says.

Floyd looks at her and she can read all the history there. The gun for hire with a soft spot for his child and a toxic relationship with the mother, who has enough baggage to make his own life choices seem reasonable.

“Did I say you didn’t?”

“It’s a dog-eat-dog world,” she says, “every man for himself.”

“Maybe,” says Floyd. “That don’t mean there ain’t no value in being nice.”

She should laugh at that.

(But she doesn’t.)

* * *

She’s not crazy. _She’s not_.

The voices in her head are all her own.

* * *

Harley doesn't bother sharing anything with Mister J. She's got a crescent shaped scar to remind her that he only ever likes it when she talks about him.

He gives her a necklace of amethyst bruises and a bracelet of yellowed garnet shaped marks around her wrist and she tells herself she’s never wanted anything else.

* * *

In her cell, Harley sits cross legged on her bed, book in one hand and a small espresso cup ion the other. She hasn’t made anyone cry or bleed for eleven days. Amanda Waller stands on the other side of the bars.

“Ready to be bad?”

Harley grins, slow and wild.

“Ain’t I always,” she says.

* * *

She feels the bullet graze her side, like a kiss compared to Mister J’s teeth and fists. Harley goes limp and then throws her arms up, a performance for one.

Because Deadshot never misses and Floyd had asked her to stay.

* * *

She falls for the longest time and she almost chokes on her disappointment when the impact doesn’t kill her. Her skin burns, and she opens her mouth to scream and then he’s right there, mouth on hers, teeth sharp and tongue hot, swallowing her pain.

Like he owns it. Like her owns her.

And she lets him.

That’s the thing.

_She lets him._

* * *

They drag Deadshot out to the cage once. Harley’s lying on the floor, half out of her mind on whatever they gave her, sticky with sweat and other fluids. 

She watches as the guards beat him, a kaleidoscope of violence that reminds her of the days with Mister J. Everything is blurred and soft at the edges, except for where it hurts, sharp pinpricks of pain down her spine and between her legs.

Before everything implodes, a supernova of infinite colour, fading to black, he looks at her, mouth bloodied, face swollen, and smiles. There’s nothing cocky or flirtatious about his expression. It’s almost friendly.

She doesn’t remember if she returns the gesture.

She does remember his eyes though.

Steady and sharp and easy to read.

* * *

She doesn’t know what the Enchantress shows the others, but she can guess. Harley has already catalogued all their weak spots: Floyd’s daughter, Waylan’s loneliness, Chato and Tastsu's grief for their dead spouses, the pink unicorn under George’s jacket and Flagg’s love for a woman consumed by a god.

Harley’s weakness, her shameful secret, the one that she’s buried so deep that even Mister J couldn’t find it, is this: she wants something normal.

In a small house in the suburbs Harley holds on tight to her daughter, their house alive with love and happiness. Her son sits on the counter, kicking his feet and eating a sandwich.

There is a low burn beneath her ribs, eating her up from the inside out. A quiet, consuming love that hurts.

Her husband smiles, pulls her close and kisses the corner of mouth, his hands warm and his eyes kind.

It’s not Mister J.

* * *

Harley brings him stuffed toys and sharp knives and shivers when his knee presses against hers under the table.

“I need a favour,” he says, and she can’t read him at all but she wants, oh god, she wants to.

“Anything,” she says, breathless, hating herself and helpless with it.

Mister J grins, the big bad wolf, and she wants him to eat her whole.

She wants him to tear her apart.

* * *

“You’re my friend,” she tells Floyd coyly, elbow digging into his side.

He looks at her and she can read amusement in his expression and wariness. He doesn’t believe her but, and this is interesting, she can tell he kind of wants to. 

There’s a sudden ache beneath her ribcage; a pain she hasn’t felt in years.

She realises that she can’t remember the names for all her feelings anymore.

* * *

“You got a death wish, little girl?”

Harley bares her teeth at the man in front of her and then licks the blood from her lips slowly.

“You have no idea,” she tells him.

* * *

The gun is heavy in her hand and she wants to pull the trigger so goddam much but it’s not enough.

He doesn’t fear death and she wants him to _suffer_.

And nothing hurts worse than love.

* * *

The first man she kills is her father. He’s three sheets to the wind, face red and fists like mallets as they rise and fall. Her mom is screaming. Harley picks up a knife and drives it into his neck from behind.

He topples slowly backwards, blood pouring from his mouth and nose, eyes wide and empty. Harley is four years old.

There’s a moment of calm; the eye of the hurricane and then her mother is screaming at her, shaking Harley, grip so tight that she carries a ring of bruises around her arms for weeks.

Her mother never does forgive her. 

* * *

There are splinters in her hand from the bat, rope burn from the cable and long claw marks from his nails.

Harley watches the helicopter hit the skyscraper, the ripple of shattering glass and the quiet rumble and raw of the explosion. Mister J had let her go.

Harley watches as her world is consumed by fire and remembers how to breathe.

* * *

Floyd takes her to meet his daughter. She doesn’t know how he talked Waller into that.

Harley can barely keep still on the way there, thoughts like spiders crawling over her skin and through her veins. She smiles, cheeks aching, and all her words double edged swords. 

Floyd listens quietly and then, when Harley falls silent, biting down on her desire to draw blood with her teeth and nails, because she doesn’t do that to her friends (not anymore), he starts talking.

“I thought she might be a good influence on you,” he starts with, speaking slowly, likely he’s practiced the words over and again in his head. “And I-”

He stops and smiles at her, reaching out to place his hand over Harley’s, where she’s scratching at the skin on her thigh, leg bouncing up and down. He looks nervous and scared and hopeful and almost young.

“Harley,” he says, and he rarely uses her name, so she stops and listens, really listens; pushes the spiders, shadows and rage down, down, down, where they can’t hurt her or him. “I want her to meet you all. I want her to know that I have people, even here. I want-” He pauses again, hand tightening around Harley’s. “I want her to see that even bad people can do good.”

Harley twists her hand underneath his and tangles their fingers together before he can pull away. She looks down at their hands and the ache in her chest is almost pleasant.

“I wanted her to meet you first,” says Floyd quietly.

Harley doesn’t say anything. When she closes her eyes she can still conjure images of postage stamp lawns, smell blueberry pancakes and hear her daughter’s laughter. 

Harley keeps her eyes open and holds on.

* * *

Batman pulls her from the wreckage of the stolen car and she hates him for that more than anything else. He looks at her, one hand around her throat, holding her down, and his mask hides nothing. Poor little rich boy with an oedipus complex and more self-loathing than he knows what to do with.

“You think you know,” she says, laughter bubbling up and pouring out of her as she watches him use his free hand to touch his bottom lip where she had bitten him.

She can taste his blood, warm and metallic against her tongue. She wonders how many times a person can die without dying. 

Batman doesn’t ask her for clarification.

“Poor little bats,” she says, wrapping both his hands around his wrist, “you don’t know shit.” 

“I know enough,” he says, voice like gravel and pity in his eyes as they trace the ink on her skin and the scars beneath her makeup.

She hates him for that too.

* * *

He is in her skin. Black ink seeping into her veins like a poison and Harley remembers all the names for her feelings. Lines them up in alphabetical order and shoots them down one by one.

All except one.

“I love you, Mister J,” she tells him, and he believes her because she means every word.

She's always been good at lying to herself.

* * *

“Why do you want the job?”

Harley smiles.

“I want to make a difference,” she says.

Harley’s always been good at lying to herself.

(But here’s the thing; some of her lies are actually the truth.)

* * *

He comes for her in an explosion of concrete and gunfire. There’s not a scratch on him. Harley knows he bleeds but she’s never seen him bruise.

She stands in the centre of her cell and waits for him.

“Darlin’,” he croons, arms spread wide. “Daddy’s home.”

Harley closes her eyes for a moment, dizzy with the things racing through her head: white picket fences, broken bones, sharp teeth, brown eyes, ink stained needles, splinters under her skin and blood and blood and blood. 

He’s standing in front of her when she opens her eyes, mouth stretched and veins like a map beneath his skin. She thinks if someone put a gun in her hand right now she would pull the trigger, no second guessing.

“Time to go,” he says, dragging the back of his sharpened nails across her cheek; a parody of affection.

Harley slips her hand into his jacket, fingers brushing against his side. There’s no gun there and Mister J is staring at her, through her, like he knows her inside out, like he trusts her.

She bares her teeth.

The truth is he doesn’t know her at all.

(The truth is he never did.)

_fin_


End file.
